


Empty

by talefeathers



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Eleventh Hour Spoilers, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, gore mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 09:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10303037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: When Magnus returns from the Continental Craftsmen's Showcase, Raven's Roost has been abandoned.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fraternite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/gifts).



Raven’s Roost had been empty for a little more than a week when a young man with a heavy pack staggered across the main bridge. 

The sprawling town had not yet begun to decay, which only made its stagnation more eerie. None of the buildings had fallen into any kind of disrepair; none of the paint had begun to peel. Even the little gardens of those who’d had them still looked fairly well-kept. It was as if everyone that had once filled these streets had simply vanished -- as if they’d been sucked all at once into some other dimension.

The young man shuddered and kept moving.

Each column he passed through revealed more of the same: freshly vacant houses that still carried faint notes of the last meals they had sheltered; cleanly gutted shops with no signs of forced entry; the occasional abandoned cart or wagon.

Each column, that is, until he reached the Craftsmen’s Corridor.

The young man inhaled sharply.

The bridge that had once connected this column to the rest of Raven’s Roost had been toppled, and the column itself had been reduced to a jagged pile of buckled wood and broken glass. There was evidence of rescue efforts: makeshift structures that attempted to span the gap left by the fallen bridge and the distinctive tang of magic. Mostly, however, there were signs of failure: dead flowers strewn along what remained of the bridge. The overwhelming stench of burning.

The blackened arm jutting from the wreckage.

The young man’s breath left him in a gust as he dropped his pack beside him. He lowered himself to his knees.

“I should have been here,” he said.

He began to cry.

“I should have -- been here!” he repeated, burying his face in his hands. “What good am I if I couldn’t -- even -- be with you?”

He began to sob in earnest, then -- in heavy, gulping gasps. He clawed his fingers into his hair and wailed until his voice could no longer scrape its way past his throat. Until his eyes, swollen and red, could shed no more tears. Until he, like the town he’d so recently called his home, was empty.

Magnus Burnsides wept until he couldn’t any longer, crumpled onto the hard, sun-baked ground.

 

Finally, slowly, he pulled himself to his feet. He leaned to one side and shouldered his pack. He walked back through each of the columns, back across the main bridge.

Then he kept walking.


End file.
